From London to Frankfort: The Odyssey of John Burgoyne's Cannon
In the fall of 1777, the Continental Army under Gen. Horatio Gates engaged a British force led by Gen. John Burgoyne in a series of battles beginning on September 19 near Saratoga, New York. The Battles of Saratoga concluded a little under a month later, resulting in Burgoyne’s surrender to Gates on October 17. The American victory at Saratoga was a defining moment in the early stages of the American Revolution and has echoed across the centuries as a formative moment in U.S. history.1
Many of the by-products of the American victory at Saratoga were just as important as the triumph itself. For example, Benedict Arnold emerged from the battles as an American hero (for the time being). The victory also demonstrated to the French that the Continental Army could achieve success against the mighty British military and, thus, the American cause was one worth intervening in. Soon after Saratoga, the United States and France signed an official military alliance, bringing France into the conflict in support of the new American nation.
Surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga, N. Y. Oct. 17th, 1777. Lithographic print produced by Currier & Ives, ca. 1852. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.
Logistically, the Continental Army’s victory at Saratoga won them a great supply of arms and equipment, which were critical in the fledgling nation’s fight for independence.2 Among the arms captured were numerous cannons, including a three-pounder brass cannon referred to in the Kentucky Historical Society’s (KHS) collection as the “Burgoyne Cannon” after its original owner. The cannon, originally thought to be lost, is one of the most storied, and perhaps well-travelled, artifacts housed at KHS. Thanks to new research, KHS can now share the cannon’s revolutionary origins and its important place in the founding of the United States.3
The gun’s design pattern was one in a series of light three-pounder pieces (so called because they fired three-pound cannon balls, or “round shot”) developed by the British in the 1770s. The Burgoyne Cannon is specifically a type called the “Congreve Gun,” after its inventor Lt. Gen. Sir William Congreve. An artilleryman, Sir William conducted experiments on behalf of the Royal Armories to improve the effectiveness of British artillery. His gun proved to be highly effective and relatively light weight, with the barrel weighing under three hundred pounds.
It also featured an innovative carriage, which allowed it to be packed and moved across a battlefield quickly. While many cannons of the time had to be attached to a limber to be moved any significant distance, the Congreve Carriage utilized two long attachments called “shafts” that could be connected to a horse or pulled by a team of men to relocate the gun while under fire. The long shafts gave the setup an insect-like appearance, earning it the moniker the “Grasshopper.”4 Thus, the Burgoyne Cannon’s light weight and effective carriage made it an ideal artillery piece to be used in rural and backwoods conflicts, such as the American Revolution.
In fact, the British military ordered twenty Congreve Guns for use in North America. The Burgoyne Cannon was the third of the twenty cannons cast and was manufactured sometime in late January 1776, making the gun slightly older than the nation that would eventually possess it. It was made at the Royal Brass Foundry in Woolwich, London, England, and the Dutch father-son duo, Jan and Petter Verbruggen oversaw the gun’s casting.
Postcard Featuring Burgoyne Cannon, date unknown. Graphic 26, Box 1, Postcards from Kentucky, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort.
Along with its other nineteen sister cannons, the British military shipped the Burgoyne Cannon to North America in late 1776 and most were supplied to Gen. John Burgoyne’s British forces. Burgoyne primarily used these cannons to defend forts and equip his units in Canada, but Burgoyne also brought four with him on the Saratoga Campaign. During the battles, the guns were grouped with heavier artillery pieces in a battery under the command of Capt. Ellis Walker of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Artillery Regiment, who was assigned to Brig. Gen. Simon Fraser’s advanced corps.5 The guns survived the battles, but American forces obtained the cannons at the conclusion of the Siege of Saratoga and Burgoyne’s surrender.6
The gun’s whereabouts in the months following Burgoyne’s surrender are unclear. Two of the captured cannons, probably the Burgoyne gun included, were assigned to Daniel Morgan’s rifleman and taken south from Saratoga to Valley Forge, where it weathered the elements with George Washington’s army at its winter encampment. The gun spent the next several years with Washington’s army before it was transported to the southern theater of the war. In July 1781, the gun was part of a force under the command of the Marquis de Lafayette and “Mad” Anthony Wayne, when British forces under Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis recaptured it in the Battle of Green Spring on July 6.
The gun would not remain in British hands for long. When the British retreated to their defenses around Yorktown, Virginia in 1781, the Burgoyne Cannon followed. After Cornwallis’ surrender on October 19, 1781, effectively ending the war and establishing American independence, the Continental Army once again possessed the gun. The Burgoyne Cannon and its sisters were inscribed to commemorate the victory of American forces at Yorktown and then entered the federal inventory, marking an end to its service that witnessed some of the Revolution’s key moments and figures.
The gun’s rest was short-lived. By 1799, the United States and Great Britain were once again on the verge of war, and the Burgoyne gun was called back into action. It was transferred to Detroit to defend the city from encroaching British forces and their Native American allies following the Northwest Indian War (1786–1795), a conflict where it may have seen action.
In 1812 Detroit fell to a combined British, Canadian, and Native American force and the British reclaimed their long-lost cannon. A year later the gun changed hands yet again when U.S. forces recaptured it in the aftermath of the Battle of the Thames (October 5, 1813).7 The Commonwealth of Kentucky received the gun as a testament to the sacrifice and prominence of Kentucky troops during the battle. For the next twenty-three years, the gun sat in the original arsenal in Frankfort, perhaps used by the state militia or for ceremonial purposes.
In 1836 a fire and explosion destroyed the arsenal. The gun’s limber, a two-wheeled cart designed to carry ammunition and support the cannon, was destroyed. Granted, the limber was not original and may have been a post-1812 replacement. More importantly, the tube was undamaged by the explosion. The limber was replaced with a modern one, patterned after contemporary military designs, and the cannon became a permanent ceremonial weapon of the state militia and was fired to commemorate important anniversaries and ceremonies around the state.
In 1909, needing space in the rebuilt arsenal and recognizing its historical importance, the Adjutant General’s office donated the cannon to the Kentucky Historical Society, which still possesses it today. Throughout the twentieth century, the Burgoyne Cannon continued to be fired on special occasions while being moved frequently between the Old State Capitol and Frankfort Cemetery.8 When the Kentucky Military History Museum opened in the 1970s the cannon moved there, still occasionally fired through the end of the decade until finally becoming a static museum piece.
Military Memorial, Frankfort (Ky.) Cemetery, 1927. Graphic 2, Folder 23, Wolff, Gretter, Cusick and Hill Studios Negatives, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort.
The Burgoyne Cannon’s story is one intertwined with the origins of the United States and of Kentucky’s unique role in the history of the early republic. Like a brass Forrest Gump, the cannon witnessed many of our nation’s canonical moments, from Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown to Kentuckians’ triumph at the Thames during the War of 1812. Even after its retirement, the cannon witnessed the speeches of Henry Clay, the occupation and liberation of Frankfort during the Civil War, the assassination of Gov. William Goebel, bond drives during World Wars, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The gun has been damaged, repaired, and modified for the better, much like the nation it helped to forge. In the process, many of the Burgoyne Cannon’s foundry marks and the “surrendered at Yorktown” engravings have worn away. Yet, the cannon remains in all its shining glory a witness to our history. In 2026 the Burgoyne Cannon will become one of the key artifacts in the Kentucky Historical Society’s upcoming America250 exhibit. Battered but unbroken, the cannon will serve to educate Kentuckians and all Americans for generations to come.
Coming next month:
Learn the story behind America's first "Liberty Tree," the origins of protest in the United States, and the Kentucky Historical Society's Liberty Tree program initiated in celebration of America250.
Additional References:
Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War (Holt, 1999).
Max M. Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga: John Burgoyne & Horatio Gates (Yale University Press, 1990).
“Kentucky at the Thames, 1813: A Rediscovered Narrative by William Greathouse,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 83, no. 2 (Spring 1985): 93–107.
Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (University of Illinois Press, 1989).
NOTES
[1] This story owes much to the work of Eric Schnitzer, an interpreter and historian at Saratoga National Historical Park and an expert on artillery of the American Revolution. Eric’s work on grasshopper-style guns has redefined the way historians see these cannons and is helping to answer questions historians and curators at organizations like the Kentucky Historical Society have long had about these unique artillery pieces from the eighteenth century.
[2] John F. Luzader, Saratoga: A Military History of the Decisive Campaign of the American Revolution (Savas Beatie 2008), 339–40.
[3] Eric Schnitzer, “A Study in Metamorphosis–Grasshoppers and Butterflies Defined,” Saratoga, New York 2018 (Unredacted version of the same later published in New Perspectives on “The Last Argument of Kings”: 18th Century Artillery (Ticonderoga Press, 2018).
[4] Adrian Caruana, Grasshoppers and Butterflies: The Light 3-Poudners of Pattison and Townshend (Museum Restoration Service 1980), 16–17.
[5] Schnitzer, 8–9.
[6] All four original guns captured from John Burgoyne’s forces still exist. The Burgoyne Cannon’s sister guns can be found at Saratoga National Historical Park, at New Windsor Cantonment State Historic Site in New York, and at the Yorktown Battlefield at Colonial National Historical Park in Virginia.
[7] Doris Settles, Kentucky and the War of 1812: The Governor, the Farmers, and the Pig (The History Press, 2023), 113–15.
[8] “On Fame’s Eternal Campaign Ground,” Kentucky Progress Magazine 12 (August 1930): 30.
